Google Cultural Institute Puts Viewers Onstage

Now, culture enthusiasts anywhere can pay virtual visits to the famed concert venue and even experience a performance from onstage, thanks to an online collaboration that made its debut Tuesday between Google and more than 60 performing-arts organizations around the globe.A new virtual exhibition from Google lets online lovers of the arts get front row — or often even closer — for a range of musical and dramatic performances.

First established in 2011, the Google Cultural Institute is an online home for works of art from hundreds of institutions, and with today’s launch of a new Performing Arts exhibition, its collection is becoming even broader.Google’s Cultural Institute has launched a series of 360-degree videos that let viewers observe the arts like ballet, orchestra, opera, and other performances from the center of the stage—and let you spin around to see the action from all angles. In collaboration with a handful of performing arts institutions, the initiative’s new video collection puts famous dances and musical pieces online as well—but the format and the HD quality of the videos lets viewers feel like they’re part of the ensemble, rather than just watching the same performance from the crowd, or from their desk chair.

For example, visitors can use its Street View tool to virtually go backstage at Carnegie Hall and other venues, such as the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and Madrid’s Teatro Real. Viewers can visit the wig workshop at the opera house in Brussels or see the historic arches beneath the stage of the Fundacao Theatro Municipal in Sao Paolo, according to Google. The New York Times (paywall) describes the initiative as part of a larger effort to attract new audiences, the kind of people who might be interested in the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Paris Opera, but who may have never visited. Visitors can click in close as string players with the Philadelphia Orchestra pluck their way through Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” from “Peer Gynt,” or watch from center stage at the Palais Garnier as dancers skim and swirl around them. At the heart of the new initiative are interactive exhibits that incorporate photographs, videos and other documents from institutions ranging from the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

They include presentations on the methods of performance artist Marina Abramovic, as well as historic images from the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. “Most of the world can’t visit any one of our institutions. It’s traffic to their content,” said Piotr Adamczyck, Google Cultural Institute’s program manager. “We haven’t cannibalized physical visitorship,” he said, adding that foot traffic is up at some partner institutions.